Benjamin Bannaky Met Racism in America

Dan Graves, MSL

Church History Timeline

On this day, November 9, 1731, a boy was born on a farm near
Baltimore, along the Patapsco river. The child had a disadvantage: he
was born black in a society that held black slaves. However, because his
mother was free, he also was free: slave mother, slave child; free
mother, free child. He was named Benjamin. Benjamin Bannaky.

Benjamin's grandmother, Molly, had come from England to America as an
indentured servant. After fulfilling her term of service, she bought the
farm on which Benjamin was born. At the same time she bought two slaves
to help her work it. Later she freed both and married one, Banna Ka.
Their daughter, Mary, bought a slave named Robert, whom she also freed
and then married. Benjamin was their son.

Molly taught Benjamin and his brothers and sisters to read, using the
Bible as a textbook. Benjamin learned to play the flute and violin. When
a Quaker school opened nearby, he attended. The schoolmaster changed the
boy's last name from Bannaky to Banneker.

At fifteen, Benjamin took over operation of the family farm and
devised a system of ditches and dams that watered it year around from
natural springs. The Banneker's fine tobacco crops were the envy of
their neighbors.

Benjamin proved to be a polymath. A polymath is a person who excels
in many fields of endeavor. Taking apart a watch, he studied its
workings and carved a wooden clock based on the principles he learned.
It kept good time for forty years. Joseph Ellicott, an industrialist,
asked Benjamin to build him a similar clock, which he did. The Ellicott
brothers became Benjamin's close friends and loaned him books from which
he taught himself astronomy and mathematics. He learned so well that he
predicted an eclipse correctly when prominent astronomers and
mathematicians got it wrong. In time, Benjamin became famous for the
almanacs he issued between 1792 and 1802.

But Benjamin may be most famous for a contribution he made to the
nation when he was sixty. He was helping the Ellicott brothers lay out
Washington, D. C. as the nation's capital. The architect in charge of
the city plans was Pierre L'Enfant. Because of his bad-temper, L'Enfant
was dismissed from the post. He took his plans with him. Benjamin
recreated them from memory.

Thomas Jefferson considered black people mentally inferior. To prove
him wrong, Benjamin sent him a copy of his almanac. In the accompanying
letter, he argued against slavery on the basis of his Christian beliefs:
"...it is the indispensable duty of those, who maintain for themselves
the rights of human nature, and who possess the obligations of
Christianity, to extend their power and influence to the relief of every
part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may
unjustly labor under..."

"...and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the
Supreme Ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not
under that state of tyrannical thraldom [bondage], and inhuman
captivity, to which too many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have
abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from
that free and unequalled liberty with which you are favored; and which,
I hope, you will willingly allow you have mercifully received, from the
immediate hand of that Being, from whom proceedeth every good and
perfect Gift."